What you need to do to prepare for the NBN.

A recent quote from Deloitte “Businesses must make the NBN a matter of boardroom discussion and take immediate steps to ready their technologies and policies”. There is a lot of hype about the NBN but what does it mean for your business and how do you prepare for it? We explain.

1. What is the NBN?

The NBN is a world class data network delivered using Fibre or wireless directly to your premises. Its high speed, initially up to 100Mbit/second has the potential to scale up to 10 gigabits/second in the future with minimal upgrades. If you think of our existing copper network as a single lane road then the NBN is a 12-lane highway. It’s delivered to your premises using network resellers you’re familiar with at the moment (Telstra, iiNet, Anittel etc). The current NBN intentions are for consumers with the business plans to be released in coming months.

2. When will it arrive?

A roll-out schedule is kept updated by NBNCo and you can search for your office location. So far certain (politically sensitive) regional areas have been prioritised first with metropolitan/CBD to follow.

3. How will NBN benefit your business?

Employee productivity will dramatically improve.

Your remote offices will benefit greatly from NBN because they will finally experience similar speeds to head office. NBN will be fantastic for remote and teleworkers.

Cloud will come into its own. You will be able to host your servers in a remote, secure location without sacrificing performance. This means lower costs and lower complexity.

Internet connectivity will be greatly improved (up to 10x today’s speeds) which will open up new ways for you to engage with your customers.

4. How can you start preparing today?

Your networking equipment needs to be compatible and designed to take advantage of the additional speed available. We recommend minimum 1Gbps switches/routers so your network does not become the bottleneck. Any new or upgraded servers should also have 1Gbps network cards.

Making your network “partly cloud” means you can start moving some of your services (e.g. email) to the Cloud in preparation for the NBN. The transition to full Cloud is not simple so tread carefully.

If you’re planning on moving office then check that your new office has fibre installed (NBN ready). If it isn’t wired with Optic Fibre then be aware that under the Coalitions revised NBN plan you may not be able to realise full NBN speeds even when NBN comes your way.

Want to know more?

Give us a call to discuss how the imminent roll-out of NBN will affect your business. We’d be happy to advise you on how best to prepare.